Richard Linklater chronicles coming of age in ‘Boyhood’

1of17The Houston Film Critics Society named "Boyhood" the best picture of the year. Richard Linklater also won for best director and screenplay.Photo: courtesy Matt Lankes

2of17Coltrane, 18 in this photo, calls the experience "bittersweet now that it's done. It was exciting to share this part of my life with these people. But it's also this cool part of our lives that's concluded now."Photo: HONS

13of17NEW YORK, NY - JULY 08: Filmmaker Richard Linklater partakes in a Q & A following an Official Academy Members Screening of Boyhood at The Academy Theatre at Lighthouse International on July 8, 2014 in New York City. (Photo by Michael Loccisano/Getty Images for Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences)Photo: Michael Loccisano, Staff

14of17NEW YORK, NY - JULY 07: Director Richard Linklater attends the "Boyhood" New York premiere at Museum of Modern Art on July 7, 2014 in New York City. (Photo by Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images)Photo: Dimitrios Kambouris, Staff

15of17FILE - This June 18, 2014 file photo shows actor Ellar Coltrane, left, and director Richard Linklater at the premiere of "Boyhood" at BAMcinemaFest in New York. Coltrane stars in the film, which was filmed over 12 years and told through the eyes of Coltrane's character. (Photo by Andy Kropa/Invision/AP)Photo: Andy Kropa, INVL

16of17Richard Linklater won the best director Mickie for "Boyhood. The film has five Golden Globe nominations: picture, director, screenplay and supporting stars Patricia Arquette and Ethan Hawke.Photo: Mark Renders, Stringer

17of17NEW YORK, NY - JULY 08: (L-R) Filmmaker Richard Linklater and actors Ellar Coltrane and Patricia Arquette attend an Official Academy Members Screening of Boyhood at The Academy Theatre at Lighthouse International on July 8, 2014 in New York City. (Photo by Michael Loccisano/Getty Images for Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences)Photo: Michael Loccisano, Staff

AUSTIN - Richard Linklater remembers being observed. He says his mother, a professor at Sam Houston State University, occasionally enlisted him for some of her studies at the school. And he recalls his fourth-grade class in Huntsville was watched behind a two-way mirror for a research project. Some might have found the practice intrusive, perhaps creepy. Linklater admits it was "a little weird" but says, "ultimately, I liked being a subject."

Years later, Linklater would develop a deep affinity for cinema, watching films in Houston. And since 1991, when he released the influential independent film "Slacker," Linklater has flipped the script and played the part of observer.

Few if any filmmakers of the past quarter century have done so with such a distinctive approach.

Most of Linklater's films find him tinkering with time. If the medium of cinema can be likened to a piece of crockery - a vessel used to contain a story - Linklater has repeatedly skipped the store and instead grabbed handfuls of clay with which to make his own narrative container. He's repeatedly used time as a tool in his films setting them in very finite periods with predetermined deadlines. Last year, he released "Before Midnight," a masterpiece and the third film in his series - following "Before Sunrise" and "Before Sunset" - about a couple in three very different stages of a relationship; each film ending at a deadline specified in its title. Linklater's "Boyhood," in theaters Friday, is his most audacious film yet, especially with regard to its meditation on time.

Twelve years ago, Linklater enlisted frequent collaborator Ethan Hawke, actress Patricia Arquette, Linklater's daughter Lorelei and a boy named Ellar Coltrane for a long-term commitment: a single fictional cinematic narrative shot over parts of 12 years following a boy from first grade into college. Linklater's day job continued uninterrupted during this time. He's made eight films since 2002. But for a few weeks each year, he'd reconvene cast and crew - "it was like summer camp," he says - and tell a story in a way no other film has.

Other directors have attempted to tell a story across a multi-year canvas. But "Boyhood's" subtle evolution is based more on patience than prosthetics. Linklater points out one of those films, "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," about a man (played by Brad Pitt with a formidable assist from makeup artists) who ages backward 70 years as time moves forward.

"That was a case of marveling at the effects, and the audience is conscious of those effects," Linklater says the day after his film earned a standing ovation after its premiere at the South By Southwest Film Conference. "I'm going for the other thing. I want them lost in the story. Where the brain accepts this as reality.

"It's what I've tried to do with most of my movies. To create the illusion of reality. It's still an illusion. It's all a big construct. There are cameras. All these lights. But the goal is for the viewer to be pulled in, in a very natural way. Of course, Ellar's now doomed to people coming up and acting like they know him."

The wiry Coltrane at film's end only faintly resembles the softer child at "Boyhood's" beginning, but the effect of seeing the actor age those 12 years is applied subtly.

"I've had people come up to me and remark on how they made me look so young," Coltrane says.

No small task

At the outset of "Boyhood," Coltrane's Mason lies down and stares at the sky. Linklater frames Coltrane's round 7-year-old face with bright green grass. By film's end, the actor is 19, walking around Big Bend's rocky contours with friends. The backdrops don't seem coincidental. In between those two shots, Mason's persona solidifies through a series of mundane interactions with the people in his life. "Boyhood's" sole special effect is capturing the passage of time in a manner that resonates like reality.

"The goal was to make it feel like one flowing story," Linklater says. "I never wanted it to feel like 12 separate episodes. The power of cinema is to get swept into the story. If you're putting up sign posts or dates or times, you break that."

"It pulls you out entirely," Coltrane adds.

"And it makes a different part of your brain engage," says Linklater, "which is effective for certain stories but not this one. I wanted you to be lost in their lives."

Logistically, this was no small task. In addition to securing commitments from his cast and crew, Linklater had to work on the film shortly after shooting the scenes. If there were sound problems, they had to be dealt with immediately before the voices of his youngest cast members matured.

"Everything about this movie was different, and I just had to make peace with it," he says. "It required a certain acceptance of the reality we'd been given."

When one of the annual shoots would conclude, Linklater would immediately edit the new scenes and add them like links to a growing chain. He also would write forthcoming pieces based on how the previous ones played.

"It really was a labor of love for most of the people involved," Coltrane says. "You became more and more invested in it as time went on."

Meanwhile, Linklater continued to follow his footloose muse. In 2003, he made his most bankable film, "School of Rock," and then set about work with Hawke and Julie Delpy on "Before Sunset," a companion piece to his conversation-filled 1995 film, "Before Sunrise." He knocked out a comedy ("Bad News Bears"), an animated sci-fi thriller ("A Scanner Darkly"), a damning critique of the food industry ("Fast Food Nation"), a period piece centered around a legend staging a play ("Me and Orson Welles") and a true crime comedy set in Texas ("Bernie").

Linklater returns to actors and characters and themes, but he never repeats himself. Even the three "Before" movies, with their two central figures and their reliance on conversation, focus on three entirely different periods of time for those characters. The meditative impetus behind each of those three stories changes as the characters age.

A film on the go

Linklater's parents split when he was 7, and his boyhood was subsequently divided. He spent much of that time living with his mother in Huntsville, but he also spent his senior year of high school living with his father in Bellaire. He studied English at Sam Houston State, where he attended on a baseball scholarship.

After college, his interest in film grew quickly. He took in as many films as he could at the River Oaks Theatre in his early 20s, likely the sole cineaste who also worked on an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico. Eventually, he moved to Austin and began to study film more formally. He's been there ever since, a champion and practitioner of independent film.

Since making "Slacker" in Austin in 1991, Linklater has largely been identified with that city, where he became a crucial figure in its vibrant independent film scene and also a co-founding member of its film society. His home and his film production company are both there. But he says "Boyhood" "has a strong Houston connection." Minute Maid Park and the Museum of Natural Science are just two of the local landmarks included in the film.

But "Boyhood" also is a film on the go, as Mason's mother (Arquette) tries to find some stability for her children. Her best efforts are frequently unsuccessful. Homes and neighborhoods and friends flash by quickly before Mason's eyes. And the eyes bear mention. Haircuts and fashions come and go in the film, and the contours of Coltrane's face transform over the 12 years. But the constant, which surely caught Linklater's attention during auditions, is Mason's eyes, which are clear and inquisitive throughout. These are crucial years in the formation of a persona, and they are perceived differently - more urgently - by a youth than an adult.

"I've always been obsessed with the idea that time moves differently at different ages," Linklater says. "When you're a kid, a year is forever. Parents just throw it off. It's different. And the way memory works. I wanted the whole film to feel like a memory of that."

Linklater brings up his favorite scene, when Mason learns his father has sold a classic car that Mason thought had been promised to him. Linklater, who turns 54 at the end of the month, and Coltrane, who is 19, disagree as to whether the father genuinely forgot his promise or not. Their experience means their eyes see the same thing differently.

Both admit to mixed feelings about "Boyhood's" completion. Linklater says he's still processing the film and the experience. Coltrane calls it "bittersweet now that it's done. It was exciting to share this part of my life with these people. But it's also this cool part of our lives that's concluded now."

The results of 12 years of their work have been distilled into a 160-minute film - long for those who seek only entertainment from cinema. But given the scope of the narrative arc, it's an impressively swift document.

"It's a long movie, but nobody has complained," Linklater says. "Though I get pissed when people call it three hours. It's two-forty. I don't think it feels like three hours. You wouldn't round a 100-minute movie to two hours. That's taking a lot of liberty with time."

Andrew Dansby covers music and other entertainment, both local and national, for the Houston Chronicle, 29-95.com and chron.com. He previously assisted the editor for George R.R. Martin, author of "Game of Thrones" and later worked on three "major" motion pictures you've never seen. That short spell in the film business nudged him into writing, first as a freelancer and later with Rolling Stone. He came to the Chronicle in 2004 as an entertainment editor and has since moved to writing full time.